Calibre not seeing Kobo in Windows 10 Preview builds

[vikont]

Originally Posted by snoeki

It works fine with the standard windows format options, just make sure to select fat32. The Minitool Partition Wizard Free was not able to format my kobo and left 2 GB on the drive after formatting... using the windows format solved the problem.

But anyhow, my kobo glo hd is working now on any windows version and also on the anniversary version. Too bad it takes some time if you have a lot of books and notes on your kobo.

Thanks for the tip. Since my work laptop with Win10Pro never got the AU update, I'll use it for backup/restore and formatting. Going in...

Yep, worked like a charm! Thanks enigmedark and snoeki!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Since the exposed storage does show as a disk and partition to Windows, I had assumed that the first sector was at least the equivalent of the MBR from some of the embedded text and the 55AA signature as the last two bytes.

I suspect I'm going to wait for the internal storage to vanish again before I do any more experimenting.

Hmmm... took a closer look at that first sector and it looks very much like a FAT32 boot sector which would mean that those modified bytes are part of the boot code block. This should mean the modified bytes should not be an issue unless you attempted to boot from your Kobo ereader.

[JSWolf]

Would someone who has reformatted please try a reboot of the Reader? Thanks.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

OK, thanks.

I've applied the pre-fix to my old AuraHD (aka the Sacrificial Goat) just to get familiar with the process - no gremlins encountered. I think I'll stop there and leave Windows Update disabled for now. I don't care at all about delaying the Anniversary Update but I'm more concerned about not keeping the Windows Defender anti-virus stuff fully up-to-date.

Would you mind rebooting to see if it works? Thanks.

[DNSB]

For those who want to use Windows built-in tools to reformat their Kobo touch screen ereader to allow using it under Windows 10 Anniversary release, the following procedure worked for me.

1. Connect your Kobo to another system (or your Windows 10 system before applying the update) and back up the contents of the internal storage
   
2. Connect your Kobo to your Windows 10 Anniversary system and open Disk Management (easiest is likely to search for Disk Management or by right-clicking on Start, opening a administrator command prompt and entering diskmgmt.msc)
   
3. Select the unallocated space and create a simple volume, select the full size of the free space, assign a drive letter, format the partition as FAT32 with the default parameters and a volume label of your choice.
   
4. Close the Disk Management console and check in Computer to see if the drive can now be opened. On my test, it came up as requiring to be formatted again so went with the same size/volume label.
   
5. Restore the contents of the internal storage that you backed up earlier.
   
6. Enjoy.

[snoeki]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Would someone who has reformatted please try a reboot of the Reader? Thanks.

I reset the kobo glo hd with the powerbutton, works fine. I also did a reset with the paperclip, works also fine.

So I think it will stay like this. It seems to me a bit weird it works now and perhaps not in the future, after resetting the device twice and restarting windows 10 anniversary a couple of times it should keep working. Well, I hope it will...

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by snoeki

I reset the kobo glo hd with the powerbutton, works fine. I also did a reset with the paperclip, works also fine.

So I think it will stay like this. It seems to me a bit weird it works now and perhaps not in the future, after resetting the device twice and restarting windows 10 anniversary a couple of times it should keep working. Well, I hope it will...

The real test will be if someone can do a factory reset on the Kobo and see if the issue stays gone or if it re-occurs.

[taos]

Originally Posted by DNSB

2. Connect your Kobo to your Windows 10 Anniversary system and open Disk Management (easiest is likely to search for Disk Management or by right-clicking on Start, opening a administrator command prompt and entering diskmgmt.msc)

Originally Posted by DNSB

4. Close the Disk Management console and check in Computer to see if the drive can now be opened. On my test, it came up as requiring to be formatted again so went with the same size/volume label.

I think - if you still have access to a pre-Anniversary Update computer - it might be easier to just use the Windows 10 system that can actually still see the KOBOeReader partition to do the formatting. You don't have to switch computers after the backup, and it will only be one step since you don't have to repeat the formatting.

BTW, I tried to format with an Anniversary Update Windows 10. I had to first create a partition in disk management before I could format the unallocated space. I was not asked to repeat the formatting - I could even copy everything back onto the new partition. However, after restarting, my Kobo Glo HD just hang. I had to remove its internal microSD card (that I could not mount with the Anniversary Update but with the older November Update - at least the third partition with FAT32). It seems that all files got corrupted somehow as I could only see those typical fsck chunks that are left after a file system check gone wrong. I had to reformat the last FAT32 partition again so that I could reboot my Kobo. Afterwards, I could connect it again to the computer (November Update), reformat it (just to make sure), and copy everything from the backup. After a restart everything still works fine. I can mount the KOBOEREADER partition (it seems Windows doesn't like lowercase characters in volume names) in both Windows 10 November Update and Anniversary Update.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by taos

I think - if you still have access to a pre-Anniversary Update computer - it might be easier to just use the Windows 10 system that can actually still see the KOBOeReader partition to do the formatting. You don't have to switch computers after the backup, and it will only be one step since you don't have to repeat the formatting.

My original pass at this issue involved doing the backup on my physical machine and then switching to the VM with the Windows 10 Preview to do the create simple volume/etc.

Originally Posted by taos

BTW, I tried to format with an Anniversary Update Windows 10. I had to first create a partition in disk management before I could format the unallocated space. I was not asked to repeat the formatting - I could even copy everything back onto the new partition. However, after restarting, my Kobo Glo HD just hang. I had to remove its internal microSD card (that I could not mount with the Anniversary Update but with the older November Update - at least the third partition with FAT32). It seems that all files got corrupted somehow as I could only see those typical fsck chunks that are left after a file system check gone wrong. I had to reformat the last FAT32 partition again so that I could reboot my Kobo. Afterwards, I could connect it again to the computer (November Update), reformat it (just to make sure), and copy everything from the backup. After a restart everything still works fine. I can mount the KOBOEREADER partition (it seems Windows doesn't like lowercase characters in volume names) in both Windows 10 November Update and Anniversary Update.

Interesting with the hang. I haven't had that issue either of the two times I've done the create volume/format/restore backup (once with a Preview build where it broke in a few weeks, the second time with the Anniversary update). As for the volume name, Windows seems to like converting lower case to upper case for them. Microsoft's case sensitivity depends on which APIs you are using.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Would you mind rebooting to see if it works? Thanks.

The AuraHD was rebooted several times during the rebuilding phase (re-applying Patches, hyphenation dictionaries etc). I haven't seen any problems so far.

[billrwood]

Originally Posted by beachboybogart

I've been trying to discover if any Kobo users (Aura HD in particular, but any Kobo) have had problems in the last few builds of Windows 10. Currently, my Kobo is recognized in File Explorer as a drive letter, but is not being seen by Calibre or the Kobo Desktop app.

I've done some extensive testing for drivers, using clean installs of Calibre, etc., to no avail. Users of MobileRead in the Calibre forum have not experienced this.

[Bill] My Kobo Aura HD is not recognizes by any of my Windows 10 Anniversary updated computers. Kobo is aware of the issue and had started working on it before I contacted them.

[billrwood]

[Bill] My Kobo Aura HD is not recognizes by any of my Windows 10 Anniversary computers. Kobo is aware of the issue and had started working on it before I contacted them.

[RZetlin]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For those who want to use Windows built-in tools to reformat their Kobo touch screen ereader to allow using it under Windows 10 Anniversary release, the following procedure worked for me.

I got the Windows 10 anniversary update and Calibre is having difficulty seeing my Kobo Glo.

I get this error when I plug my reader into Calibre:

CantOpenError: unable to open database file

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 87, in run
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 503, in _books
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 1659, in books
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 161, in device_database_connection
CantOpenError: CantOpenError: unable to open database file

I followed the steps DNSB listed out, Windows 10 can see my eReader, but Calibre is having issues.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by RZetlin

I got the Windows 10 anniversary update and Calibre is having difficulty seeing my Kobo Glo.

I get this error when I plug my reader into Calibre:

CantOpenError: unable to open database file

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 87, in run
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 503, in _books
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 1659, in books
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 161, in device_database_connection
CantOpenError: CantOpenError: unable to open database file

I followed the steps DNSB listed out, Windows 10 can see my eReader, but Calibre is having issues.

That means either calibre cannot find the database file, or it has been badly corrupted. The first thing to do is check that Windows has mounted the device as a letter, that you can see the files on it, can see the database n ".kobo\KoboReader.sqlite", and that you can write to the drive.

If you can do all the above, then you will probably have to sign out of the Kobo account on the device and do the setup again. This will recreate the database.

[JDesat]

I've tried the option DNSB gave; backup on a different machine, format on the Win10 Anniversary machine and restore the backup from the other machine. But every time I do that, when I plug back into the Anniversary computer it tells me I need to format the drive again. Do I need to do the kobo setup before restoring the backup or something?